Telegram has officially escalated its battle against the Indian government, moving the Delhi High Court to challenge the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeitY) order to temporarily block the platform nationwide.

Advocate Madhav Khosla mentioned the urgent writ petition before a vacation bench headed by Justice Tejas Karia, who agreed to hear the matter immediately.

Why the Government Blocked Telegram

The temporary ban, invoked under Section 69A of the IT Act, is scheduled to run until June 22. It was triggered by strict recommendations from the National Testing Agency (NTA) ahead of the high-stakes NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21.

• The Fraud Target: The NTA requested the ban to crack down on organized cheating syndicates operating channels like “PAPER LEAKED NEET” and “Re-NEET 2026.” Fraudsters have reportedly been trying to extort lakhs of rupees from anxious students by falsely claiming they have early access to the upcoming re-test paper.
• The Message-Editing Crackdown: Alongside the network block, the government ordered Telegram to disable its message-editing feature in India until June 30. Investigators found that scammers were taking old posts, editing them post-exam to insert leaked questions, and using the original, unedited timestamp to fabricate proof that they had the paper beforehand.

Telegram’s Legal Arguments: “Grossly Disproportionate”

In its petition to the High Court, Telegram argues that the blocking order is a severe overreach that penalizes an entire ecosystem for the actions of a few bad actors. The core arguments include:

1. Massive Public Disruption: The platform noted that the blanket shutdown impacts over 150 million users in India, including lakhs of students and educators who legitimately rely on Telegram channels for test preparation and study materials.
2. Proactive Moderation Ignored: Telegram stated it has been actively cooperating with law enforcement for weeks, using automated AI tools alongside manual reviews to scrub more than 900 links containing unlawful NEET-related content. It claimed that when given a list of offending URLs by the government on June 9, it wiped them out within an hour.
3. Violation of Article 14: The company contends that the government is unfairly singling them out. The plea argues that misusing a platform does not justify its absolute suspension, and doing so while leaving “similarly situated intermediaries” (like WhatsApp or Signal) completely untouched violates constitutional guarantees of equal treatment.

The Corporate Sideshow: Durov vs. Reliance

The legal drama unfolds alongside a massive corporate blame game. On X (formerly Twitter), Telegram CEO Pavel Durov publicly accused Reliance and Meta-owned WhatsApp of being behind the intense lobbying campaign to get Telegram banned in India.

Durov even claimed a local telco was using “BGP hijacking” to disrupt Telegram traffic outside of India, though telecom industry insiders quickly dismissed the claims, noting Durov was likely confusing the bankrupt Reliance Communications with Mukesh Ambani’s thriving Reliance Jio.

With the NEET re-test just days away, all eyes are on the Delhi High Court to see if it will grant Telegram emergency interim relief or uphold the government’s pre-emptive